March 31, 2007

So I think I have found a solution to a long time irritant in my life…. sticky glue residue guck left over from price tags and other things stuck to products. People much smarter than I have told me that Goo Gone works really well and I have tried to find the stuff on several occasions but failed miserably each attempt. So with a particularly nasty product label attached to a large thermos I recently purchased, I decided to do a Google search on “goo gone active ingredient”.

It looks like citrus oil is the main ingredient in Goo Gone. The soon to be banned incandescent light bulb in my head went off. Buzz Away, an all natural mosquito repellent that I use, contains citronella oil and eucalyptus oil. It is expensive, but I have some kicking around so I gave it a go and it worked really well.

When I read about Buzz Away being as good as Deet based mosquito repellent products, I went on a wide search for the stuff. Turns out that most health food stores carry it. The problem with Deet based products, for me, is that they dissolve plastic. When I’m on a dive vacation and I’m in the water 4 or 5 times a day, constantly applying Deet based repellent is a pain and I my fingers stick to camera equipment and other plastic stuff. Buzz Away is a great solution if you don’t mind the price and the pungent, but not unpleasant, citrus oil smell.

March 30, 2007

Kaleidescape Inc. is pleased to announce that today, after a seven-day trial, Judge Leslie C. Nichols of the Santa Clara Superior Court ruled that Kaleidescape is in full compliance with the DVD Copy Control Association’s license to the Content Scramble System, the method used to encrypt video and audio data on DVDs.

March 30, 2007

March 29, 2007

[I]n a paper to be published in an upcoming issue of Physical Review Letters, MIT researchers report that they have visualized for the first time a convoluted tangle underlying turbulence. This work may ultimately help engineers design better planes, cars, submarines and engines.

March 29, 2007

March 29, 2007

Tom Slee has posted The Long Tail 12 – The Infinite Screen in his ongoing scrutiny of Chris Anderson’s book “The Long Tail”. Anderson claims the internet will increase the number of movies available a “gazillionfold”. Tom challenges Anderson on the data.